[Edaily Starin YUN GI BACK Reporter] Even in North America, it’s rare to find a movie with this much profanity. As Director Na Hong-jin’s “Hope” is currently playing in North American theaters, one unexpected statistic is drawing attention locally: the film features the iconic Korean swear word “Xbal” a whopping 137 times.

This is not an official tally. It’s a number counted by audience members who watched the film and shared it online. However, word of mouth has carried the story overseas. The U.S. publication *The Hollywood Reporter* recently referred to this as a “widely circulated fan tally” in an interview with Director Na, reporting that “Ssibal” appears 137 times in *Hope*. They explained that “Ssibal” is a Korean swear word equivalent to the English “fuck.”
The intensity isn’t significantly toned down in the English subtitles either. Depending on the context, it’s translated as “Fuck!”, “Fucking,” or “Fucker,” ensuring that Korea’s “K-swear” is conveyed in full to North American audiences.

◇More than Hollywood’s “swearing-heavy movies”
The significance of the number 137 becomes even clearer when compared to films released in North America this year.
The U.S. film content guide “Kids-In-Mind” meticulously tracks profanity, violence, and sexual content in movies by category. According to the site, the R-rated horror comedy “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” released this year, features the “F-word” and its derivatives approximately 131 times. This means the “F-word” appears more than once per minute in the 108-minute film.
Director Boots Riley’s *I Love Boosters* isn’t far behind, with the “F-word” and its derivatives appearing about 110 times. Kids in Mind awarded this film a score of 10—the highest possible rating in the profanity category. This year’s *Resident Evil* was also tallied as featuring the “F-word” more than 100 times.
While these figures cannot be viewed as a simple “official ranking” due to differences in who conducted the tally and the criteria used, the 137 instances in “Hope” surpass the “F-word” counts in these other films. “Hope,” which even sparked reactions in Korea that it “contains too much profanity,” holds its own when compared to R-rated Hollywood films—the “home of profanity” (?).

◇137 Times Even After Cutting Out 200
What’s even more surprising is that 137 is the result of “cutting it down as much as possible.”
In an interview conducted at the time of the film’s domestic release, Director Na explained that, in response to criticism that the film contained an excessive amount of profanity, he had removed about 200 instances of such language during the editing process. While the final cut contains 137 instances—as counted by some viewers—one cannot simply add the two figures together to conclude that there were originally 337 instances. This is because scenes and dialogue can change during the editing process.
For Director Na, “Xbal” was not merely a vulgarism. He explained that he used it as a sort of “interjection” to instantly vent the emotions—such as surprise, fear, and anger—of characters driven to extreme situations. In fact, in *Hope*, this swear word is repeated whenever the residents, confronted by an unidentified entity, fall into confusion.
Ultimately, the 137 instances of “X-bal”—which stood out particularly to Korean audiences—became another point of interest as the film crossed the ocean. It’s as if “K-swear,” rather than monsters or gunfights, is now competing with Hollywood’s top-tier swear-filled films in terms of sheer frequency.